I always hate to disagree with my distinguished colleagues, but I find it a little difficult to get worked up about a few imported seeds when you can walk into any supermarket and find fruit from all over the world. Apples, pears, stone fruits, grapes from Chile and Argentina; raspberries, mangoes, bananas and all kinds of vegetables from Central America and Mexico --- I could go on forever. We are in a world economy, and, like it or not, we are stuck with it. Sure, you may say, all this stuff is inspected and controlled by the USDA, but I would suggest to you that the USDA capability to inspect the large volumes of imported fruit is so miniscule that you might as well call it zero. For practical purposes, none of this stuff is inspected. Controls over the types and amounts of chemicals used to produce these edibles are similarly absent. Niptrix does not have a revolutionary idea here. Many other people who have lived for years in tropical South and Central America, including me (12 years), have seen all this stuff and much more. Some of these unusual tropical fruits are pretty good, some fair, and others downright disappointing. Anything that will grow and produce very good fruit in the US is already available here, and if it's not that's because it has some major defects. Some tropical fruits like mangoes are very good indeed, and we ate tons of them when we lived in coastal Ecuador, but here we can grow peaches and apricots that stack up well against any mango. I wouldn't go to a lot of trouble to try to introduce a new fruit from Peru into the US because everything that is worthwhile and will grow in subtropical areas of this country has already been tried, and most are already available from specialty nurseries and seed distibutors. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

You could try the method from Winter Sown. Org. It only takes 30 minutes to remove the gel and disinfect your seeds and you don't have to grow mold. Good Gardening, Mary Here is a link that might be useful: Winter Sown. Org - How to save Tomato Seeds

Most of us have a watering can around the house. When I know that I'm going to process some seeds by fermentation tomorrow (or just soon), I make sure it is filled up and allowed to outgas the chlorine over night. The chlorine, even in small amounts kills a lot of the things in the fermentation jar that we would really like to keep around. Even though I feel the chlorine is gone, I still limit the water to a very small amount - usually only a single tablespoon full in a half-pint jar that is 1/3 full of juice and seeds. These jars are set out onto the screened in porch and are not covered with anything. I get the occasional critter (bug), but they probably only add to the gel-eating mixture. Seems like some folks here are making this a lot harder than it actually is. If you do the pre-fermentation scrub of the gel and seeds (WITHOUT ANY RINSE), then like has been stated, the process takes less time for a given temperature range. But here's the thing that most are not realizing. If you get the seeds out of the fermentation and are rinsing and find out that they should have gone a little bit longer, NO PROBLEM. Just put them into the strainer and add a tiny bit of Comet or other scrubbing cleanser with bleach and give them a little scrub. Then rinse and dry. If you normally do a bleach soak, do it before the last rinse and dry or, alternatively, you can consider the Comet with bleach as completing that step. If you bleach, do enough final rinsing that will eliminate the aroma of the bleach from the seeds. Relax. Do that germination test and let it tell you how well you're doing. Ted

Need to say up front that I have no personal experience with it here but from what I have read about it it is a soil borne fungus only and only grows under certain ideal conditions of moisture and air temps. So that would lead me to believe that the seeds would be fine and especially so assuming they were properly fermented and disinfected before saving them. HOWEVER, PennState does say Southern Blight "fungus can be spread in running water, in infested soil, on tools and implements, in infected seedlings, and as sclerotia among the seed." Note: not "in" or "on" the seed but "among" the seeds. So again, proper fermentation and disinfecting should eliminate the problem IMO. Dave